


The Best Kept Secret

by Bawgdan



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 22:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18903784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: We don't get to decide when or how we are going die, but eventually, we all do.





	The Best Kept Secret

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Suicide has never crossed Machi's mind. Envisioning a world without Chrollo, suicide tantalizes her. It is fleeting, but not any less aggressive in the forefront of her thoughts. Had she known what she knows now, she could've gone her entire life not knowing whatromance could potentially feel like. She still isn't sure if that's what she had been experiencing.

Hisoka is a lying thief. So is she. The many lives she has ruined would wager that they all had it coming. Their demise had been growing within, like a cancer, and she had been watering it.

If Hisoka was going to kill anyone first, it should've been her. Machi's exterior is cold because she is susceptible to mercy. What a foolish weakness to have before a fear of heights or bugs no bigger than a fingernail. He had stormed through her heart-space and cut up the soft walls, made room for his big body like he had business being there all along. God, supposedly, owed him Machi—clearly it was a lie he told. Hisoka isn't naturally poetic, but she absorbed it like a sponge because for the very first time in all of her years on Earth, she felt beautiful (she can't even recall needing to feel that way).

However her love for Chrollo and the Spider is unconditional. Her feelings for Hisoka came about through conditions and precarious circumstances. Which is why it is so easy to call him. He answers, out of all the times she has called to no avail, seeking some twisted joke of approval, he answers and is honest about what he has done. In a calm tone of voice. Like she had called him to catch up on time that they have missed.

When she challenges him to a fight, he laughs hoarsely into the phone. He had made it his mission to kill them all. Machi is no exception just because she's had his dick in her mouth. He just should've started with her first. It would've made the pain less complicated. It's really the source of her anger. The superficial feelings, she put aside his first time betraying them.

Hisoka agrees to fight her. She is uncertain too. If he had the gall to survive Chrollo, the odds of her winning shrink. 

She reflects on herself cynically. Hisoka had already began the process of killing her. Without the troupe, she is no one. Perhaps he knows this so well that he intends to leave her alive so that she can suffer differently. He will be affectionally imparting an eternal grief that time cannot heal. Machi will either kill him or kill herself if she's loses and he refuses to finish the job (which she doubts but he has always surprised her).

In the green outskirts of some town, in the middle of their distance-they meet halfway.

Tall trees hide the black stretch of the sky. A full moon that looks dangerously close to the surface peeks through the sinewing branches. Hisoka's smile shines through the darkness. Rods of moonlight curve around the shape of his face. The shadows of leaves sway along the white fabric of his shirt.

Machi has forgotten what he looks like in person. The image of him in her head pales in comparison to what he looks like in the flesh. His arms are a very swollen kind of strong. She figures he looks so differently because she has programmed herself to reject what she once found alluring. Sentiment has ruined her common sense.

All she can think, beholding his smugness, how stupid they were for letting him slide.

"Why?" Machi uses more breath than she means to. The question has been turning her stomach for days. She holds down the vomit boiling in her throat.

"Why not?" Hisoka shoots back.

They should've killed him in Yorknew. 

Machi has a million questions but she knows him better than reason, apparently. Her intuition had told her—Chrollo always emphasizes that people 'tell' on themselves if you've got ears good enough to listen. She failed everyone and wanted some form of death badly.

"Are you going to make it worth my while?" He holds his smile.

She knew everything she wanted to say for days. Her words elude her now. Death supersedes her cleverness, once again. There isn't much else to say. Machi summons the strength of her ill feelings and lunges for him.

He dodges each of her attacks. Instead of side-stepping a fist to the throat, he catches the force of her knuckles in his palm. With his other hand, he grabs the entirety of her small face, digging his nails into her skin hard enough to make her bleed.

"Your form is sloppy, Machi." Hisoka reprimands her.

Machi breathes against his hand and the warmth tickles. The nerve to cry painfully burns the inside of her nose. She could use her free hand to rip into his abdomen, but she doesn't want to. Her hands are quick enough to disembowel him. The will to do so dies. It has been a long time since she has smelled him. Having his skin pressed into her face stirs up the ghost of her stolen feelings. Hisoka loosens his grip, holding her by the jowls. 

"This isn't how it's supposed to happen." He says disbelievingly. Offended more so than empathetic. 

A torrent of shame causes Machi to choke on her tears. 

"Well how did you think it was going to go!?" She growls, pitifully.

"Not this way." His smile fades. 

"Tell me what way, Hisoka?" Machi manages to speak clearly with his fingers squished into her face. The blood trickling from her temples mixes with her tears. Doom washes over her. She could've been the strongest person in the world had she not compromised herself.

Hisoka doesn't answer her. When he averts his eyes behind her, to look at nothing, she figures he doesn't know either. 

Getting caught up in the moment is something they both have in common. Affection is terrible in that it feels like a good self-discovery but can also alter your mental capacity. Machi physically might be strong but she is soft when it shouldn't matter. Shalnark told her about herself. She heard but did not listen. Now he's dead for it.

"Am I just another number to you?" She could've simply been an experiment. Hisoka likes blunt means of destruction but emotional damage is far more effective. She wouldn't put it past him. Arguably, she's not much of a better person.

"That's not fair. You've killed far more people without giving them much of a choice." He counters. It's the straightest she's ever seen his face. "What makes you special?"

He isn't wrong. Machi can't think of anything smart to say. Can't even come up with a proper insult. With a shove, Hisoka lets go of her bruised face. Machi rounds on him, clumsily, and he wrangles her into the dirt by her elbow. He forces her down the wrong way, breaking her arm in the process. She doesn't scream, but she inhales air into her chest. Sobs quietly because it doesn't hurt as bad as her bereavement. Splintered bone protrudes through the skin of her forearm. 

"Now look what you made me do." Hisoka crushes his knee into her stomach, holding out her arm as he examines it.

Machi watches the moon lose its form through her hot tears. The light is a halo around Hisoka's lowering head. Their noses touch and he looks Machi straight into her full eyes and says, "You're not dead yet. Until you wrap your head around it, I refuse..."

But she is very much dead. She can't be convinced otherwise.

"Since when have you ever been merciful?" Machi can feel the wind caressing her broken bone but the inches between their lips are much more powerful. 

"That's the dumbest thing you've ever said to me."

"Hisoka." Machi mewls. 

The longest silence of her life passes. 

"Why didn't you kill me first?" 

"Because I wasn't ready to, but I will. Just not today, nor tomorrow. Probably not even next week either." He frowns like it had been physically irksome to say.

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**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Once again, I'm very drunk and have no idea what I'm doing. I just had a nagging rush of gloom and doom. I write so much from Machi's perspective, I should really write from Hisoka's. Next time I will. Any errors I missed, when I am sober, I will comb through. As of right now, thank you.


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